Painting And Reupholstering An Old Foot Stool

This is another post that John wanted me to name Stool Boom (here’s why John likes that name). Anyway, a while back I redid a stool that wasn’t ours. It just showed up in the mail and I spruced it up. More on the mysterious mail thing in a minute. First here’s how I got ‘er done. This is a terrible before shot, but picture an old beat up periwinkle blue stool with nails and holes and a rotting wood top:

The first thing I did was get all the old nails out with the back of a hammer:

Then I primed it and painted it a rich navy color (I just grabbed a $3 test pot of paint in Benjamin Moore’s Santa Monica Blue). Ignore the crazy-bright blue color going on in this picture – it’s a very strange camera trick. In real life = navy. Anyway, after my two coats of paint were dry, I dug up some extra loft batting (originally from JoAnn) that I already had and some fabric that I had around as well. Why? Because I’m cheap. And it’s not my stool. Haha. If you’re keeping track, so far, I had sunk $3 into someone else’s stool.

Then I got fancy and picked up two $1.79 boxes of decorative nail heads (from JoAnn). I know, I splurged. What can I say, I’m a giver.

I figured I could use these guys to secure my batting and my fabric along each side of the stool. So I just cut the batting and the fabric about two inches larger than the top of the stool on all sides, and pulled the excess down and folded it under for a nice clean line. Then I tapped each nail head into place to keep things secure. I spaced them about 2″ apart (and used a 2″ piece of cardboard as a spacer to keep the gaps consistent). About thirty taps later I had done one side…

I continued to tap my way around the other three sides and I was left with a sweet little stool to not call my own. Total cost: $6.58. Except I have no earthly idea why she looks royal blue again. See the pics above – that’s probably the most true that the blue looks. So it’s a nice rich color but not too bright in real life.

Here’s a full shot from the side (the same pic I should have taken as a before instead of a zoomed in crazy one):

Then I hugged her, kissed her (more than once), and lovingly sent her off. Sniffle. Weird stool business going on, right?

… but in our column we don’t redo furniture, so the stool was for another article they were running in their winter issue about makeovers by a few bloggers who all received surprise items in the mail to redo. There were some pretty amazing fellow bloggers in the mix, like: Style Me Pretty, Centsational Girl, Jen Geigley, Renegade Handmade, and Lori Andrews. It was really fun see what they did, like this two-tiered-table turned cake stand from Style Me Pretty:

And here’s my little stool makeover. I love how they styled it with yarn because of all the craft stuff that I have in our house, I have zero yarn. Haha.

Oh and really savvy folks might even recognize the fabric as one of the ones we used for Clara’s weekly pictures. We love how it looks like water and the bean looks like she’s swimming in this pic.

After making her quilt and birthday banner there was still more than enough for a surprise stool makeover. Gotta love it. What furniture have you guys been making over lately? Any painting or reupholstering going on? And kiddos swimming around on fabric? Hey, if it makes ’em happy…

Psst- We might be biased, but we think this video of Clara singing a medley of songs is the cutest thing ever. That girl loves to sing!

What a fun stool (that sounds weird to say, by the way)! Navy can be so serious sometimes so I’m glad you paired it with a bright fabric. Maybe you could DIY a stool with one of Clara’s extra fabrics for you to keep somewhere around the house.

Love all the blue. Almost on the same lines as your bench/chair redo. Thanks to your bench post I redid mine too. Great Q & A in the magazine. Especially loved John’s idea about adding a large picture with several smaller ones.

I am nearly done slipcovering an armchair. It has been an 18-month project (house guests, pregnancy, baby, life) but I’m still in love with the crazy crab print fabric. I originally recovered one of the pair then when we found we would be joined by a little spitter-upper we had to switch to [washable] slipcovers. All worked out and the chairs are cushy and fun. After the process, I decided it seemed fitting to name my sewing machine Pequod.

Good timing on this post for me! I am planing to redo a similar footstool for our bedroom today. I’ve never used nailheads before, do you just hammer them in with a regular hammer? Rubber mallet so you don’t dent them? Thanks!! That stool came out great!

I used a regular hammer although I’ve heard rubber mallets are recommended. The nail heads didn’t dent or anything, so I think it worked! You might be faster with a rubber mallet because you can probably bang them harder (I tapped them in lightly so I didn’t dent them).

Hi there! Love this (and all of your) projects! Quick question- did you secure the batting and fabric with just the decorative nail heads? Is that enough to keep everything together? I typically see people secure everything onto the bottom of the piece so it’s out of sight, then add the decorative bits on top. What’s your secret for such loveliness? :)

Yup, in this case the nail heads held everything down, and with around ten per side it was as secure as using ten staples per side on the underside! It’s really just a personal preference thing where you secure the fabric, so while I love redoing dining chairs by pulling the fabric under and stapling them so those staples are hidden, in this case I thought leaving the scalloped wood base of the top exposed and using nail heads might add interest!

I am a huge fan of the fabric (like so many others). But also, a huge fan of the original paint finish. There are a ton of bloggers out there blogging on fauxing an antique finish just like the one you had. I am not a faux finish lover, but I do love an original (been to hell and back) finish on an antique piece. Just my 2 cents.

the photo in the mag gives me an idea for our oyster basket that we got in lyon, france a couple years back (we bought so much furniture & antiques during that trip, we had to have a shipping container bring it all back to this side of the pond). right now its just sitting on the floor at our log cabin sans adornment, but i have all these balls of cashmere yarn (back when i had time to loom) stored away in a cedar chest at a different home. i think im going to combine the two together & see what happens.

Man, I want someone to send me random things to redo! Or I guess I could just start redoing things we already have…
I still really want to redo the lampshades on these guys: http://wp.me/p1Ccc8-2g
Maybe that should be one of my goals for this year. Way more likely than say, regularly working out (or at all).

I just started subscribing to DIY magazine and was super excited to see my favorite bloggers in there not once, but twice! I wondered how you did that stool, so the timing of this post was right on the money. Thanks for always showing that makeovers don’t have to be hard on the wallet:)

I picked up a really cute rocker on the side of the road. (gotta love the free price tag!) It has canning that is falling off on the seat portion and the back is totally missing. This is going to be my biggest challenge yet. Fortunately I have your rocker re-do to help me out.

I haven’t figured out what direction I’m going to take it yet. Leave it wood, or paint it? What kind of fabric do I want to use, etc. Decisions, decisions!

WfG is one of my fave movies ever… I will sometimes just burst into “Stool Boom” for no apparent reason :) Have you ever watched the deleted scenes? My favorite quote ever: “It was a sad movie… rope broke!”

Love it! My mom and I just reupholstered a cedar bench for the foot of the bed. I picked the fabric (Waverly Bedazzle in Silver Linning – you have done stuff in another color of the same pattern) from JoAnn and she did the staples. She actually got in from Craigslist down in Richmond/Chesterfield! (We are local, live in Fredericksburg). It’s a Lane cedar chest. Here is the before and after! (Sorry for crappy pics, both taken from my phone!)

I’m in the process of reupholstering my counters stools with that same fabric! I have plans to make them waterproof by diy’ing it into oilcloth with linseed oil. Unfortunately, you have to do it outside when it’s above 40 degrees. So I’ll have to wait. Bummer.

I forgot to write this before, so p.s. :
Bizarro world! Just yesterday I was relooking at your old “Stool Boom” post to find the comment about carsiding. And I left it up all day so I wouldn’t forget to check the pinterest links for it. So every time I walked by my computer, I saw the tab “Stool Boom”. And then today… crazy.

p.p.s. I <3 your go-to phrases. Sad that sometimes people are so unnecessarily critical.

I’m gearing up to do a makeover on my tiny box bedroom so I’m gonna be doing some reupholstering I think. I’m super excited, thinking soft gray on my walls and a couple of punchy pieces of furniture (pretty sure my plain pine dresser is going to go a bright coral color)

But painting my walls means that my cheerful rainbow stripes which I painted on my wall over a year ago (and then sent a picture to Sherry and she went GAGA for them) may have to go, which is a very sad event D: